There is indeed a touch of the Betty Davis about Georgia Anne Muldrow, but labelling her as a straight retro revivalist would be a falsehood.

Seeds

With her large afro, retro styling, and old-fashioned album covers, it’s easy to tag Georgia Anne Muldrow as a '70s soul diva who seemingly dropped through a crack in time, landing straight into the 21st century. There is indeed a touch of the Betty Davis about the funky California native, but labeling her as a straight retro revivalist would be a falsehood. For six prolific years now, Muldrow has forged one of the most singular careers in modern soul music, building an unusual discography of avant-garde jazz, scratchy record sampling, Swahili crooning, and eclectic collaborations -- over a series of albums that often stretch to the near 30-track mark.

With a more digestible 11-track format and the joint billing presence of underground superstar Madlib, it’s reasonable to believe that Seeds is intended to be her breakout (Muldrow normally self-produces). No one would suggest that Madlib is a mainstream hit-making machine, of course, but with a history of working with more universally embraced artists than Muldrow -- Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Slum Village, for example -- he seemed a sound choice to help establish herself outside of her loyal but tiny fanbase. Not so. In fact, Seeds continues to stretch the Muldrow sound, journeying through her self-created spiritual world with Madlib firmly in the passenger seat and not vice-versa.

Linking her peculiar discography is Muldrow’s compulsion to tackle the multi-faceted subject of maintaining our Earth, dedicating songs to just about all Mother Nature’s gifts, from the wind and sun, to, of course, the children who stand to inherit it all. Often shedding her brand of soul entirely of its pop leanings for something more befitting the heavy subject matter (or so she believes), Muldrow is more about the message than the melody. “Who’s on the lookout for the seeds?”, she asks on the album’s opener, and most impressive song, “Seeds”. It’s one of her tighter efforts, snappier than the elongated far-out jazz numbers she’s dedicated to the wind, sun and other elements. "Don’t wait”, she urges listeners over a prominent soul sample with wandering Harlem horns and strings. "Wind" (of the Earth, once more) is powered by a tidy drum section -- a Muldrow trademark -- while "Calabash" also treads familiar ground, with scat-like vocal exercising and a well-worn “Why do we kill each other when we’re all the same?” rhetoric.

"Best Love" is a brighter effort. Here, Madlib really shows and proves. With its liquid bass, rounded drum beat, and glorious horn stabs, the song could pass as a Jill Scott jam -- a welcome change of pace from what has come before it. Later, Lib reigns in the instrumentation on "Kneecap Jelly", a RZA-like hip-hop beat for the saintly singer to run free on, battling everything from the president to child labour in foreign lands. And it’s in these instances she remains at her happiest. Muldrow no doubt draws on her spirituality to power her art, and no super-producer will ever turn her into a Badu-like starlet. And that’s fine, because for now, Seeds is another interesting record to add to Muldrow’s pile.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.